Home of the Mega Deth Party since 2012

There’s both a good and a bad side to being so sleep deprived that I actually fell asleep three times while writing this sentence. Counting all the positives, we have boundless creativity and a drive to write as many posts as physically possible before the end of the week. Keeping the much vaster swath of negatives in mind though, it doesn’t mean much that I have ideas when I can barely express them coherently. And that, children, is my excuse for getting this post up nearly five days after watching the episode. So yeah, sorry about that. Continue Reading »

There’s a question that kept popping in my mind while I was watching this episode, regardless of how many times I attempted beat it down: Is a nondescript, demure personality completely devoid of recognizable traits something that’s in itself distinct? If you have ten people in a room, nine with vibrant personalities and one without, does the one stand out more than the nine for being the exception to the norm? Or do they fade into the scenery so much that recalling any detail regarding appearance or demeanor becomes a Herculean task?

When I kept asking myself this in lieu of paying close attention to the episode, I realized that it wasn’t a vain search for a way to describe the Assistant; I was trying to pin down my own tenuous thoughts on Watashi. I mean yes, the Assistant isn’t exactly brimming with what would ordinarily be described as distinctive charm, but his repertoire of Hawaiian shirts more than makes up for it. Continue Reading »

I didn’t think that Jinrui could shock me with any antagonist that it could conjure up at this point. We’ve had headless chickens, corrupt corporate pawns that care for little more than climbing the corporate ladder, and anthropomorphized space probes, so the level of quirkiness would have to be off the charts to even register with me at this point. That’s why, even considering the simple yet effective fever dream-like quality of the plot and the way that it hinted at their involvement along the way, I didn’t expect that the fairies would finally take an active role as antagonists.

Of all the zany shenanigans that comprise most of Jinrui, very few have been a direct, conscious result of the fairies. In spite of the pivotal role that they play, they’ve been portrayed more as brilliant, if careless creatures rather than manipulative or self-serving; most of their goods are made to help a far-gone, dependent human society on its last gasp, rather than directly suit their own needs. This is the first episode that’s established the mischievous nature hiding behind their perpetual faces of surprised joy, and the effect is only eerier when examined with more scrutiny. Continue Reading »

So there’s this Blog Carnival thing that’s going around to all the good little blogs, leaving them pingbacks, comments, likes, and everything else that’s good in this world. Unfortunately we can’t leave this post at that, because these kinds of Faustian deals always require some kind of recompense, usually writing of some kind. So I’m officially throwing my hat in the “what makes a good animanga blog” ring to provide my unique perspective on a matter that’s near and dear to nobody’s heart in particular, but crosses damn near every aniblogger’s mind at least once. Enjoy! Continue Reading »

Space travel is a concept that’s paradoxically one of the most culturally iconic and divisive among the population, especially since this is a world where economic security takes priority over plumbing the deepest reaches of space in order to discover cosmic monstrosities lurking in the darkest corners of the furthest galaxies. Unlike most moral or economic arguments, where one side is composed entirely of people that think coloreds-only bathrooms were a good idea, and the other is made up of unerring optimists with stars gleaming in their eyes, both sides in this debate have a strong voice of reason embedded in their arguments.

However, nobody takes the time to ask the thoughts of the real heroes, the vehicles engineered to drift through the void of space; after all, they’ve had to weather the loneliness of spending years without any sort of human contact. Jinrui took that fateful step when nobody else would, and the result is touching, if unsurprisingly cynical. Also, it involves a giant cat fighting an equally massive nautilus, which probably registers as some kind of fetish to a small subset of the population. Continue Reading »

From what I’ve seen of Uta Koi so far, I want to dislike it. I want to watch an episode, feel a familiar pit of vitriolic loathing swell in my stomach, and vomit it through my fingers onto the keyboard to truly express in written form why it’s the scum of the earth, and tangentially bring up why ARIA is the best thing ever. But unfortunately I can’t do that for everything in life, even when talking about anime that examines possible catalysts behind the famous One-Hundred Poets’ writings. There’s something about Uta Koi that’s so pure, so wonderful, that it shines through the many faults and manages to give me something to love about each episode. Continue Reading »

AKB0048 is a special kind of stupid, not helped at all by the stupefyingly gaudy finale and writing on par with the material churned out by the half-literate transients that Capcom hires to write the stories for their games. I was tempted to resign myself to a post similar to Scamp’s 20 Reasons to Watch Aquarion EVOL, because any show where a girl can shoot missiles out of her arm while her friends use microphones as lightsabers deserves at least a nod before being rightfully catapulted into the oblivion of collective public amnesia.

But something happened that shouldn’t have, given that this was about as gimmicky a show as can be, something that shocked the world to the core, setting off several minor earthquakes worldwide—a sequel was announced at the tail-end of the episode. The “official” reason? Apparently the show was popular, or the people who decided to fund it were high on more oxycodone than was originally thought. But perhaps it’s not as simple as all that. Continue Reading »